


Never Too Much Bucky

by Lisenik



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Minor Canonical Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:15:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23378218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisenik/pseuds/Lisenik
Summary: Five times when Bucky wasn’t Bucky and one time when he was.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Never Too Much Bucky

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Баки много не бывает](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15497337) by [fandom_Starbucks_Roles_TwoSexyMen_2018](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandom_Starbucks_Roles_TwoSexyMen_2018/pseuds/fandom_Starbucks_Roles_TwoSexyMen_2018), [Lisenik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisenik/pseuds/Lisenik). 



> Check the notes at the end for the spoiler warning about minor characters.
> 
> Translation by [Kana_Go](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kana_Go)

Steve was cooking breakfast. For two! Eggs, bacon and pancakes – he needed twice as much food because the shower was running in the bathroom and he desperately wanted to take a look inside to make sure it wasn’t just his imagination. He still couldn’t believe that the second plate of a hearty breakfast was for Bucky who’d lived with him for already a week and now was washing after his morning workout.

One day Bucky just appeared at the door of his apartment – he rang the doorbell and Steve opened without looking. That’s why the first thing he heard wasn’t ‘Steve’ or ‘punk’ or at least ‘I’ve remembered everything’, but…

“Your security guys are an embarrassment. Who appointed that team? Besides, you yourself should know better than to open the door without checking the surveillance camera.”

It was so unexpected that Steve gave a nervous laugh, then he smiled for real, cheerfully and a bit incredulously. The bells in his head were ringing, Bucky-Bucky-Bucky! but somehow he managed to collect himself and chuckle, “I’m happy to see you, too. Now that you’re here, come in.”

Bucky looked a bit shy after what he’d said for some reason, but then he lifted his head, smirked and – that was it! – walked through the door, pointing out, “You’re such a jerk!”

Steve had been preparing for this meeting, consulting with a SHIELD psychologist, as well as with Sam and – against his will – with Natasha. It was she who had repeatedly rubbed his nose in the classified documents obtained by her and provided a glimpse of Bucky’s possible condition. After finding him, Steve had been going to follow the basic rules: no limiting his free will, creating an atmosphere of trust and eliminating any stress. However, Sam, Natasha and the SHIELD psychologist turned out to be wrong: it was external problems that had pulled Bucky out of his half-vegetable existence and lead him to Steve’s apartment door.  
This newfound Bucky was paranoid from top to toe: he was torturing Steve with constant inspections of the locks and the latches, he made Steve stay away from the windows, he’d taken apart every appliance in the place (thank goodness he’d put them back together later). He could only be calmed down in two ways for a little while: by feeding him – but even a supersoldier wasn’t able to eat without a break – and by hugging him. As for the cell phone, they had a Serious Talk resulting in Steve winning the right to answer calls from familiar numbers. They decided not to invite guests just yet though.

The happy morning routine was interrupted by the doorbell. It’d happened twice this week when food delivery had arrived and each time Steve had had to use hugs and tender words to persuade Bucky to hide his weapons and retreat to the bedroom. This time Steve decided with relief that Bucky was busy enough in the bathroom and opened the door.

A tall guy, almost taller than Steve, with an unevenly cut scraggly beard, dressed scruffily, but somehow familiar, shot a shy glance at him and drawled with such a recognizable Brooklyn accent, “Stevie… I’ve… I’ve remembered everything.”

***  
The new supersoldiers were uncontrollable.

No one knew what HYDRA bosses had hoped to accomplish with their orders that the operatives whose abilities were already outstanding enough be treated with the serum, but ordinary soldiers were suffering as a result. The curators of Project Zephyr didn’t mind replacing a few subordinates, but periodically they had to change their own pants. The strike team, becoming more aware of their own potential, kept causing more problems. Unlike Object Zero whose compliance had been achieved through the code words and long training, the brand new superhumans were too human.

However, the dark German genius who was the prime mover behind HYDRA’s entire ideology managed to keep his end up. Dr. Gruber who once had had a hand in transferring Dr. Zola’s mind into a computer system came up with a seemingly incredible idea.

“Finally, I’m able to carry out a unique experiment. I’ll copy the mind of the successful subject and transfer it to our problem… patients’ heads,” he pontificated, unabashedly admiring himself and paying no attention to the round greenish face which was grimacing furiously on the screen behind him. The face was clearly trying to say something, but the speakers were off.

“I’ve never been able to perform mind transference into a new body; I’ve done it with an inorganic host only.” He waved his hand in Zola’s direction, noticed his attempts and turned the volume control.

“You have no right to steal my research, taking advantage of my physical inability! I didn’t create Object Zero for you to…”

Dr. Gruber turned off the sound again and started editing and rewriting the lines of the code on the terminal hastily. The greenish image of the face rippled and when it appeared again it had a blissful smile. Gruber turned to his listeners, “I beg your pardon, these electronics are still pretty flawed. A human’s brain is an ideal vehicle for data though and we must make the most of…”

The doctor went into ideological demagoguery and it took the military commanders who were listening to him a minute to realize that his rhetorics no longer had anything to do with the current problem. However, it was decided to try his invention.

In the process of preparation, a lot of common soldiers went down, but the five test subjects were sedated in the end.

Object Zero, pretending to be a piece of furniture out of habit, was shuffling to the procedure, listening discreetly to his guards’ lazy chatter.

For some reason, Object Zero felt no pain during the procedure. After the first successful attempt, something like serial production began: memory wipe – intermediate preparation – recording. Five Winter Soldiers joined the ranks and followed orders impeccably and immediately. However, there was no work for them for a long time so they were put on ice for long storage.

The new team’s abilities enabling them to take over a small country quietly or make a few adjustments to the structure of a big one were to play a crucial role in Project Insight. The possibility to shoot potential threats to HYDRA from orbit was cool of course, but what about those who hid in bunkers able to withstand a nuclear blast as soon as they felt the first sign of danger? What about the defense systems waiting for their moment under tons of rock and concrete? Seizure of the most important facilities all over the country was entrusted to the five supersoldiers, but they waited for the go order in vain.

Left to their own devices, hiding alone in warehouses, in HYDRA’s safe houses and secret hideouts, those five weren’t worried about the failure of the operation – they were generally short on feelings and emotions. The only thing that made something stir in their chests – sooner or later – was a video of the tall athletic fair-haired man who had taken part in dismantling HYDRA’s operation in Washington. He was clearly identified as Captain Rogers, a level 6 target, who was to be exterminated on sight. Yet, it was a pleasure to see him alive, something akin to the pleasure they took in completing a successful mission. Consequently, the available information was insufficient and search for it became a priority. The five supersoldiers were heading for Washington, D.C.

***  
The elderly attendant in the Smithsonian’s Museum had been extremely happy and satisfied with his job lately. Those kids who usually hardly looked up from their phones kept gathering around him in swarms these days to listen to every old tale about the events he’d supposedly witnessed in his early childhood. Ecstatic, the attendant went on and on about Captain America and his dear friend Bucky Barnes. His happiness had lasted for a week and the only thing that annoyed him was a carnival of freaks. Really, some ragamuffins made a habit of visiting the exhibition. They were quiet, they didn’t distract other visitors nor disturbed the peace nor touched the exhibited objects, but something was equally wrong about all of them.

One day the attendant, tired of kids’ shouting, decided to retreat to the cinema hall for a couple of minutes. The screen was showing that old little documentary in which Cap was patting Barnes on the shoulder and smiling happily. The attendant routinely brushed off affection he felt every time he saw it, and when he looked back he noticed a woman who stood very still and tense with the expression of recognition, disbelief and tremulous joy on her face. Over the last few days, he’d been observing the same behavior in several more visitors: first, they took a turn around the hall and stayed there for a while, watching two or three replays of the videos, after which they proceeded to check if the picture of Bucky Barnes on the memorial wall had any resemblance to the reflections of their faces, running their fingers over its mirror surface. The attendant kept wondering how many sick fans Cap had. He received no answer as he was distracted by an excursion group of enthusiastic old ladies. He had to watch out for this sort of fans.

***  
The base looked abandoned, but Barnes knew that wasn’t true. HYDRA had always staffed its facilities with a skeleton crew, and now he could observe subtle familiar signs. Rogers though, a plague on his stupid head, didn’t even think about that, seemingly intending to use his extraordinary tactical abilities and come through the front door. Bucky mapped out the mental site plan and started climbing the wall of the warehouse, deciding to provide fire support while Rogers was clearing the yard of the old factory building. However, he discovered that an perfect spot for a sniper’s nest was taken – as soon as he got to the roof a lean guy rolled away from a rifle mounted on a tripod and, lying on his back, pointed his gun at Bucky. Suddenly the opponent’s expression grew confused and Bucky recognized him.

They both lowered their weapons in silence and the guy waved his hand in the direction of the far corner of the roof overlooking the part of the yard his fire didn’t reach. Bucky settled there, noticing a sniper’s post in a window of the opposite unfinished building in passing and exchanging signals with the shooter. But then everything went wrong: Barnes who had worked directly with Rogers and his current abilities could understand when an enemy wasn’t a threat. Unlike the other babysitters. The very first HYDRA’s mercenary who had the audacity to raise his weapon against their dear Captain caught two rifle bullets and a knife. On the other hand, Barnes had to shoot those who tried to call for backup all by himself. At least, speculation over dead bodies and examining bullet holes that seemed to appear from completely different sides didn’t take Rogers too much time. Bucky couldn’t see his face, but Rogers probably smiled before he rushed into battle again. 

Things went on like that – Barnes nearly shot a tall blonde who, just like he, was trying to take out the soldiers lying in wait (it happened after he’d jumped off the roof, mixing Russian and Arabic swear words, and ordered the second sniper who’d tried to follow him to stay put). While they were hissing at each other in low voices through clenched teeth Rogers managed to kick open a booby-trapped door. As the blonde tried to bring round Rogers who had used his shield to cover himself a tall bald man rushed to help her, ran right into the metal fist and thus became the one who needed help.

Hardly had Bucky brought the injured man around the corner when Rogers started coming around. The blonde was there, too, and the three of them exchanged looks in silence. Barnes’s look was a bit puzzled and the others’ were doglike and slightly possessive. It made some memories come to the surface, in bits and pieces – why these people thought they were him and why Rogers was so important. This silent conversation lasted until their ward scrambled to his feet, grunting like a real centenarian, and moved on through the fresh breach. Barnes rolled his eyes and muttered, “He can do this all day” and his new acquaintances just smirked in response.

They followed Rogers quietly, listening to him get in touch with someone (Bucky suspected it was that redhead, Natasha) and explain that half of the paper documents were in the shredder and the computers seemed to be damaged and beyond repair.

It became clear that the fight was over, the situation had to be dealt with by someone else and SHIELD had already laid its hands on all the information. Barnes and his copies exchanged shrugs and made the decision to continue monitoring the situation from a greater distance so as not to be seen by the agents.

***  
Two days later the situation was repeated: the doorbell, then a stranger calling himself Bucky and really remembering Steve. Now it was a man with Asian facial features whom Bucky remembered as a master to throw knives and other small metal stuff. By that time all explanations had been listened to, Steve had stopped tip-toeing around and asked Natasha for another piece of information. He’d accepted the idea that five copies of Bucky would stay in his apartment eventually, and he even hugged the newcomer (Bucky-3, the man was unwilling to agree to a different name) awkwardly, not daring to press himself against him and constantly turning to look at the original.

Bucky-2 who had adapted a bit by then was very tense and quiet which didn’t really match his size; he always tried to hide in a corner and put a throw pillow between himself and the rest of the world. Now the ‘crash course’ on psychiatry from Natasha came in handy. Steve listened attentively to the fragmented shards of memories, pretty mirthless ones for the most part: about the life in Brooklyn, search for jobs and miserable apartments – and made it a rule to hug the newcomer at least once a day.

Bucky-3 brought a fresh dose of the absurd into their house that already looked like a madhouse. Checking the window latches and the door locks wasn’t enough for him: he checked how strong the walls were and if the glass was bulletproof, then he set an observation post on the roof, ignoring pigeons and all the related inconveniences with imperturbability of a professional sniper. He didn’t demand hugs and even hit Steve upside the head once, but still, one could see the same carefully hidden fragility in him which Steve had seen in Bucky after he’d freed him from captivity. Steve wanted to encourage him, pat him on the back and give his shoulder a familiar squeeze but didn’t dare, he couldn’t get used to the man yet. He hoped Bucky-3 would get the necessary support from his doubles. Three heads, with a memory like a sieve though they were, were better than one: Bucky and his copies had created a stable system and needed no words to feel when one of them went wild. Three Buckys seemed not to talk to each other aloud at all. When it came to safety and household tasks they acted as a single multiple-handed organism and started quarreling only near Steve. Whether he liked it or not, Steve had to give his support to them, whose number reached five in the end.

In one of the guest rooms, Bucky-2 and Bucky-5 (the shooter from the warehouse) lived. They were quiet and secretive, and daily healing hugs were for both of them now. Bucky-4, the muscular blonde who took the second room, once had a few too after which she developed a habit of hanging around Steve at every opportunity, almost climbing on to his lap. In such cases on the other side the original Bucky appeared, hissing and glaring, though he perfectly understood that his monopoly on Steve’s bed wasn’t in any danger.

The perimeter integrity suffered though: instead of ringing the doorbell like all decent people Bucky-6 preferred to stick around, making the security nervous (they were good for something after all) and annoying all the residents of the house but Steve. Over and over again Steve kept putting a thermal mug of coffee and a bag full of buns, sandwiches or burgers on the doorstep, and one day Six just approached him, looking the other way awkwardly, with his arms wide open as if he didn’t know how people hugged. After that, he didn’t want to let Steve go and only with great difficulty they managed to persuade him to share Barnes’s old room with Bucky-3.

They really needed to do something about that. This was the conclusion Tony and Natasha came to when they dropped by and brought a small terabyte-sized gift – the data on Project Zephyr was stored as digital documents. Steve wasn’t even able to rise from the sofa to meet the visitors: he was pinned under the five Winter Soldiers just like an old cat lady under her pets. Six locked the door, jumped on the back of the sofa and started pushing his neighbors aside to get to Steve’s shoulder. It was apparent that the guests irritated all Buckys, but not enough to lose precious physical contact because of them.

“Well, well, for the first time in the arena: The Incredible Steve Rogers and his Frozen Marshmallows! Project Zephyr, remember? What did those Russians mean anyway, a breeze or confectionery? My money’s on the latter![*] Do you let him go to the bathroom alone? I’m not talking to you, Kremlin’s Hand, you seem to be somewhat more normal. Come on, help me get him out of here, I need to talk to him privately.”

Stark was ordering about so impudently that no one tried to stop him.

More trouble than he’s worth, Barnes decided and shooed away everyone craving the captain’s body with a single frown, finally allowing Steve to get up and have a stretch. Natasha stayed in the living room to keep Bucky and the ‘marshmallows’ company and subtly show her willingness to lay down her life for Rogers’s right to privacy.

***  
“First things first, I won’t be able to bring their memory back. Probably, no one will. The neural pattern isn’t just destroyed, it’s rebuilt after the image and likeness of Saint Barnes. The work done is amazing aside from the moral implications of this…” As usual, Tony couldn’t sit still, he was walking around the studio, grabbing, examining and putting aside now a pencil now a brush caked in dried paint.

Steve realized, much to his unhappiness, that the last time he’d worked here, in the attic, was before that whole mess with Project Insight. Even though he had so many models at hand. If only they didn’t want to be held all the time…

“I don’t really care about their memory anymore,” he explained, sounding upset. “It’s about minimum comfort. They all are Buckys and they all love me, and I…” Tony turned to him sharply, raising his eyebrow, but Steve didn’t react. He continued, “Bucky, my Bucky, said they’d tried to negotiate. But it doesn’t work so far. Each of them thinks they’re the only one and they all remember the time we shared the tent back in 1944”. Tony snickered, but Steve didn’t respond again. “They tried to take turns. They tried to draw lots. But Bucky’s always been impulsive so rules don’t work really well for all of them. Then I stepped in. As a result, Bucky sleeps in my room; we don’t have any vacant ones anyway. And in the daytime… well, you saw it. I think I must at least hug them sometimes, but it feels like I hug totally unfamiliar guys. And a girl”. Finally, Steve blushed. “If I love Bucky, I shouldn’t care about his appearance!”

“You do care if you have several.” Tony came to understand that Steve wasn’t going to get embarrassed about some specific things and grew serious. “By the way, how do they perceive their looks? Not being able to remember your own face must be depressing.”

“They say it’s disorienting even though they know what was done to them.”

“What about their memory? Do you remember back to the old good days to get you through the long nights?”

“It’s different for each of them. Their memory is coming back gradually: some of them are remembering more while the others are remembering less. Some of them remember Brooklyn better and the others have more memories about the war. Six actually remembers only the Soviet Union, but even he cares about me.”

“Oh, so you gave them numbers? How sweet.” For a moment Tony got distracted by a box of watercolor pans making a funny rattling noise. “And you started with a one like a real old man.” He caught a surprised look and explained, “Starting with a zero would be more logical. All modern computing systems have switched to this format.”

“Tony!”

“Okay, okay, don’t bite me. Sick of them, aren’t you? I wasn’t just asking you about their memory. Each of them remembers you so if we make a mold of their memories… mmm… By the way, we’ll need your tissue samples, the more diverse the better. So, I have this thing… just the prototype in fact… You know they have plenty of your DNA in SHIELD and they’ve even decoded it. JARVIS, get to work.” Tony started babbling. “Yeah, so this thing can read the memories and generate the image, write the behavior algorithms… We’ll have to take some of yours of course… In fact, the world doesn’t deserve even one more Steve Rogers,” he raised his voice theatrically but then smirked and added, “It’ll be even more inhuman like that.”

“Tony, am I getting this right? Are you suggesting each Bucky should get their personal copy of… me?”

“Oh, you’re not completely hopeless, grandpa. There’s a minor problem though…”

“So creating a grown man with a given personality in a test tube isn’t even a problem?”

Tony waved him off.

“The tissue printing equipment – Cradle, a nice name, eh? – is on the SHIELD base the existence of which I’m not aware of.” Tony put a marker back on the table and made air quotes. “But Dr. Helen Cho, the inventor of the method, is Bruce’s good acquaintance. And you have an entire subversive group at your disposal. According to our tentacle friends’ data, this team is perfectly able to enter the base and leave it nice and easy. You’ll have to smuggle in me, the arc reactor and a thousand pounds of pork though…”

Once again Steve was surprised how the opportunity to screw over their bosses brought people together. Upon hearing these reflections, four of six Buckys called him an ungrateful jerk who didn’t understand how lucky he was.

All Avengers, except Thor who’d flown off to do his alien business, participated in Operation Find a Date. Stark and Banner got out of the lab and announced that the prototype of the memory reading device (Steve refused to use the abbreviation Tony suggested) was ready to go. Steve demanded their solemn promise that the equipment wouldn’t remind of that torture chair all six Buckys still saw in their nightmares and the inventors kept it. Now memory reading was performed in a special room by sensors disguised as fluffy clouds and a patient was supposed to settle comfortably in a giant Bucky Bear’s paws. At the sight of Steve’s dropped jaw, Banner just shrugged.

Six was the only one who really liked the bear. The others agreed to be scanned sitting on the floor. Stark hoped it hadn’t affected the results which were sometimes quite different. Each Bucky remembered Steve in their own way and some of their memories didn’t resemble one another at all. Fishing everything they could out of their fragmented memories, they got five separate unique Steves Rogers – one of them even came out a skinny shrimp exactly what he’d looked like before Erskine’s experiment – but the serum in blood, stubbornness and love for Bucky remained unchanged. Stark tried to guess how memory would interact with DNA and created a medium variant out of curiosity, but it turned out absolutely witless. Apparently, Steve Rogers’s main superpower was contradictory nature.

Clint and Natasha secretly got Dr. Cho who had been invited to a non-existent conference to Stark Tower. The operation entered a decisive phase. A few days were allocated for it and all this time Tony Stark, the five Winter Soldiers, as well as Steve and Bucky for moral support, were to spend at the SHIELD’s closed base, in the basement without power, by the harsh light of the arc reactor powering Cradle and in the company of the growing number of fresh pink Steves Rogers, confused and therefore looking for a fight.

There were some challenges, but in general, the plan succeeded. They managed to calm down the group of the newborns, diluting the critical mass of the panicking Rogers with the focused professional ‘marshmallows’. While Stark was obliterating the traces of his work, starting sterilization of Cradle, and a couple of Buckys were picking the biomass residues from the tile floor and destroying them, Steves began to look around more sanely as if in search of enormous global injustice. Only Bucky was hugging his Steve and shaking his head sadly, not sure how the universe would handle these unexpected gifts.

***  
The universe handled them just fine.

“Hey, Four, do you want to hear a new joke?” Bucky was using his vibranium hand to juggle colorful gems. “How many Steves Rogers are needed to break the Infinity Gauntlet?”

“Like I didn’t see it. One Steve for each finger and one more little shit,” she answered with the mix of exasperation and pride in her voice, “so as to hit certain someone in the purple nuts. With his head. Jumping up.”

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler: The characters are five Winter Soldiers.
> 
> *The Russian word 'зефир' (zephyr) can mean both ‘a breeze’ and ‘marshmallow’.


End file.
